https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZ2-eNW77o
In a captivating YouTube presentation produced just a few months ago, accessible via the provided link above, Vladlen Koltun, Distinguished Scientist at Apple, (formerly Chief Scientist at Intel, and previously a Professor at Stanford University from 2005 to 2013), elucidates how fast decisions can be made regarding the evaluation of researchers.
Koltun's presentation, while extending beyond an hour, offers significant insights, particularly around the 12-minute mark and thereafter. During this segment, he asserts that traditional metrics, such as the number of publications and the impact factor of journals, are bad metrics that should never be used in the evaluation of researchers. This is due to the presence of low-quality papers within high-impact factor journals, and conversely, exceptional papers in low-impact factor journals. I had previously furnished evidence of this in a post dated January 21, 2020. https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-journal-that-has-low-impact-factor.html
Beyond minute 22 Koltun unveils the findings from an extensive study, encompassing millions of papers. These results highlight a striking surge in hyper-authorship, particularly prevalent in Physics and Biology. This surge has rendered the conventional use of the h-index ineffective for researchers in these fields unless fractional allocation (h-frac) is used. The study shows that h-frac is a robust metric that outperforms other measures as a correlate and predictor of scientific awards. Naturally, it's evident that this serves as compelling evidence that Clarivate's Highly Cited list is inherently flawed, a fact underscored by recent research conducted this year by two researchers of Norway and Denmark. In fact, The aforementioned Koltun´s h-frac-related paper had already been mentioned in this blog in a post of May 9 https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-best-performing-measure-in-terms-of.html
Around minute 50 Koltun addresses the issue of publication inflation, a topic that has been previously discussed in this blog like in 2019 about a radical UCL proposal and again in 2021 regarding the problems associated with the deluge of scientific papers. Koltun clearly states that researchers should publish less and also asserts that metrics should play a pivotal role in mitigating publication inflation.
PS - Check Vladlen Koltun webpage in here http://vladlen.info/
